What am I?

[Ky****]

Whenever I research to find a word for my sexual and gender identity, I get confused.  My body is male; my spirit is female BUT I'm okay with my male body.  I'm not bisexual.  I am attracted to my wife, and I love that we have made children together.  I call myself a "lesbian blessed with a male body".  Is there anyone else like me?

[Be****]

Hi there! I was assigned female at birth but I identify as non-binary. I do not identify with the socially constructed concept of a "woman". Like you, I am also okay with my body. What I am not okay with and never have been okay with are the expectations placed upon me due to the kind of body I have. I wear clothing perceived as masculine because that is how I experience euphoria (as opposed to dysphoria) concerning how I present myself to the world. We are all unique expressions of both masculine and feminine energy. If lesbian is the sexuality label that you identify with the most, please know you can feel free to peacefully accept that. Similarly, lesbian is the sexuality label that I identify with the most, even though I don't consider myself a "woman". Please remember that labels are just societal mental concepts, signposts that we use in an attempt to help others try to better understand our personal identities and preferences. I hope any of that helps! Please feel free to message me if you'd like to discuss further. I have others in my life experiencing and expressing themselves in similar ways.

[Ky****]

On 3/20/2020 at 7:34 AM, BeingBre said:

Hi there! I was assigned female at birth but I identify as non-binary. I do not identify with the socially constructed concept of a "woman". Like you, I am also okay with my body. What I am not okay with and never have been okay with are the expectations placed upon me due to the kind of body I have. I wear clothing perceived as masculine because that is how I experience euphoria (as opposed to dysphoria) concerning how I present myself to the world. We are all unique expressions of both masculine and feminine energy. If lesbian is the sexuality label that you identify with the most, please know you can feel free to peacefully accept that. Similarly, lesbian is the sexuality label that I identify with the most, even though I don't consider myself a "woman". Please remember that labels are just societal mental concepts, signposts that we use in an attempt to help others try to better understand our personal identities and preferences. I hope any of that helps! Please feel free to message me if you'd like to discuss further. I have others in my life experiencing and expressing themselves in similar ways.

Argh.  Apparently, time ran out on my ability to PM.  Could you PM me an email address?  Thanks for your understanding.

[Tine]

On 3/20/2020 at 12:34 PM, BeingBre said:

I was assigned female at birth but I identify as non-binary. I do not identify with the socially constructed concept of a "woman". Like you, I am also okay with my body.

A wholehearted yes to that. :-)
I didn't question my sexual orientation and my gender while growing up, but others did question and label, and none of the labels did fit. I think it was a mix of personal growth, getting to know myself better and the rising awareness around non-binary and gender-fluid identities that in hindsight, I realize that this was something that was lacking.
Having a female body is ok, and I think being male would not have bothered me either.

[Ky****]

On 3/21/2020 at 6:03 PM, Kymera said:

Argh.  Apparently, time ran out on my ability to PM.  Could you PM me an email address?  Thanks for your understanding.

Bre, I accepted your friend request, but the website still won't let me PM you.  Is it okay with you if we email?

[Be****]

Kymera, the website won't let me PM you yet either, until 3/29.  We can definitely email if you're comfortable posting your email address here for me to retrieve it that way.  Or we can just wait until 3/29, if that's better for you.  

[Bj****]

1 hour ago, BeingBre said:

Kymera, the website won't let me PM you yet either, until 3/29.  We can definitely email if you're comfortable posting your email address here for me to retrieve it that way.  Or we can just wait until 3/29, if that's better for you.  

Dear @BeingBre and @Kymera. Could you please try to send pm again. It should work now again! Any further problems, let me know!
Have a great day both

[Be****]

44 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

Dear @BeingBre and @Kymera. Could you please try to send pm again. It should work now again! Any further problems, let me know!
Have a great day both

Thank you, @Bjoern!  I sent them a message and it seems to have submitted successfully ?

[Bj****]

Just now, BeingBre said:

Thank you, @Bjoern!  I sent them a message and it seems to have submitted successfully ?

good to hear (read)
 

[Tine]

@BeingBre and @Kymera I am sorry for the technical problems. The whole idea of the site is to enable such conversation and the technology f...ed it up.
Of course, we would have liked the messages to function so you can easily communicate and also so you'll keep using happiness.com - did you know that we even have a chat function - it a bit buggy and well-hidden but it's there. You should be able to create your private rooms for conversations.

Thanks @Bjoern for fixing it already. ?

From a personal perspective, I'd appreciate if some of the conversations could still happen here and I'd love to be involved because it hit something deep inside of me and I'd love to explore this further with you.

 

[Be****]

@Tine Thank you, though I know technical problems are just part of our lives!  I have perused the chat function before and I am totally down for creating a private room for the 3 of us to converse in, if we are ever all online at the same time ? Regardless, I am happy to continue conversing with both you and @Kymera right here in this thread so long as we all feel comfortable doing so.  I am happy to involve anyone who this conversation strikes a chord within!  Gender and sexuality are among my favorite topics to discuss.  My perspectives on these subjects are deeply personal and complex.   

[Tine]

Thank you, @BeingBre

I am only slowly dipping my feet in. When we started the project, the gender options were only female and male, and for some reason, I really fought for adding non-binary and the option to not say anything at all. Technically this caused us lots of problems because there's internal logic added to the gender choice in the programming as relicts of the original software. At the time I thought it was just fair, open, tolerant, accepting, welcoming and all those other values we want to live true to here on happiness.com, but I came to realize that I also wanted it for myself as I didn't want to check the female or male boxes.

"I do not identify with the socially constructed concept of a "woman". Like you, I am also okay with my body. What I am not okay with and never have been okay with are the expectations placed upon me due to the kind of body I have." What you wrote here is the most accurate thing to me I read in ages.

 

About possible chat times: I am in Hamburg CET and as I work here anyway I am really flexible timewise ?

[Be****]

Thank you for being such an advocate for freedom of expression, @Tine.  I definitely felt like this was the right forum for me when I realized I could accurately reflect my identity here.  Thank you so much for your acknowledgement of my statement.  It has taken me quite a while to finally be able to put into words how I feel as a being who has been subjected to the social construction of the gender system.  I'm very enthusiastic about discussing these matters further with others, especially those who are still lacking the knowledge needed to fully come to terms with their identity.  

Chat times for me:  My schedule is all over the place right now due to a pending change in employment but I'll be on here today until 08:30 EST and tomorrow from roughly 00:00 - 08:30 EST, if either of you are available to chat during those windows!   

[Tine]

I usually login here at around 9:00 CET till 17:00 CET.

I am not sure about where to begin with this exploration. ? I've been me for so long now, and I put a lot of effort into loving and accepting myself for who I am that I think in the end I kind of bypassed labels. Which is great, but I still believe that by getting more familiar with it, I can do some good for myself, deepen my understanding, navigate society better, and set personal boundaries easier and probably also support others better.

The first incident where I was annoyed by the gender roles was in elementary school. We were playing "the fall guy", and I was asked to play Jody because of being a girl with long blond hair. Instead wanted to be Colt or even Howie. The answer to my question "Why do I have to be Jody?" - "Because you are a girl" did not convince me at all.
It was also the time my mum dressed me in cute powder coloured girly clothes and my dad taught me how to use my pocketknife and gave me a used BMX bike. There are no hard feelings around those memories at all. My mum kept trying, but her efforts were pretty often covered in mud. ?
As a teenager, I was a pretty good Kurt Cobain lookalike. My dad was proud that I'd wear his checkered shirts and my mum rolled her eyes at us.

[Ky****]

I could have sworn I said this previously.  Maybe I didn't click "submit".  Oh well.  Here it is again:

I am overjoyed to have you as new friends.  I will be more than happy to keep up this conversation in the common area.  I was just hoping to find a conidential friend to discuss the more personal things with, and beingbre offered.  

I notice that all of you so far are "male spirits in female bodies", if you don't mind me putting it that way.  I wonder if there are any other female spirits in male bodies like me.

[Ky****]

I also would like to address an elephant in the living room.  I am a Christian and realize that there are some terrible examples of Christianity out there who are not Christ-like at all.  Jesus said to love everyone, not hate.  I know Jesus personally, He lives inside me, and I would love to spread the word that He absolutely does NOT hate you.

[Ky****]

Some less personal things I shared in PM with another friend:

As to labels, I am a mental health counselor, and talk with patients about their diagnoses.  Some feel that they are labels or self-fulfilling prophecies, but I explain that the purpose is to help doctors and counselors to understand what is going on with a person and know how to treat them.  I wish there were a word for what I am that would help me and others understand with no underlying implications.  No judgement to anyone else, but for me "assigned male at birth" implies that I'm upset in some way that my body is male.  I understand that some people are upset about their body's gender, but I am not.  I am happily married to a woman, and we have wonderful children.  I love the fact that my body and the gender to which I am attracted can make children together.  I am jealous of my wife, however, for having been so close to our children that they were INSIDE her for 9 months each.  I had a relationship with my mother which was too close called "codependent", but my relationship with my father remains distant no matter how much we talk or honestly try to relate.  I am very afraid of this happening between my children and me, but perhaps my body has nothing to do with it.

[Ky****]

I wish there were a word that would explain what I want and need from other people, just so I don’t have to take the time to explain it to myself or anyone else.  I wish I understood.  I know I’m not gay, but at least that would be a simple explanation.  When I was in high school, I had been rejecteed by girls so many times, I think I had an “aha” moment in which I figured that if I could not be accepted to “become one” with a female, I would make my whole self into two, and I began to cross dress and use a different voice when thinking and speaking with my feminine personality.  (Now I need to explain that I don’t have the disorder known in psychology as “Dissociative Identity Disorder”, commonly known as “multiple personalities”.  I might literally have multiple personalities, but it is not a disorder, In fact, I have done it to help me survive emotionally.

[Ky****]

On 3/20/2020 at 7:34 AM, BeingBre said:

Hi there! I was assigned female at birth but I identify as non-binary. I do not identify with the socially constructed concept of a "woman". Like you, I am also okay with my body. What I am not okay with and never have been okay with are the expectations placed upon me due to the kind of body I have. I wear clothing perceived as masculine because that is how I experience euphoria (as opposed to dysphoria) concerning how I present myself to the world. We are all unique expressions of both masculine and feminine energy. If lesbian is the sexuality label that you identify with the most, please know you can feel free to peacefully accept that. Similarly, lesbian is the sexuality label that I identify with the most, even though I don't consider myself a "woman". Please remember that labels are just societal mental concepts, signposts that we use in an attempt to help others try to better understand our personal identities and preferences. I hope any of that helps! Please feel free to message me if you'd like to discuss further. I have others in my life experiencing and expressing themselves in similar ways.

What is the "social construct" with its expectations as you see it?  It seems to me from studying history that the "social construct" and expectations on women changed a lot from the 1950's, although we're still not "there" yet in our fight against sexism.

[Ja****]

Weird that this is the first thing I see on this site, because it's very similar to what I've been going through all my life. I've been much more open and public about wearing make up and 'female' clothes, but when people ask what I am, my only answer is 'I'm Jason'
Unlike you, I am bisexual. But it tends to be more that I'm attracted to men sexually and women romantically. Although not always... I just can't seem to put a label on 'what' I am, but then maybe I don't want to.
Anyway, I've rambled enough. Thank you for the opportunity to just share some of the stuff in my head

[Tine]

@Kymera Excellent point! I - too - lack the right word. Personally, I'd prefer to be genderless unless having sex is involved. The rest of the time just like @Jason-randomnumber said "I'm Tine" and that's good enough. But what's the word for that? I do not have any suggestions that do not sound odd. But that's probably part of it until a new language, and with it, a new understanding is established. 

 

I am German, and in German, all words have one of 3 genders. We have used the male version for the plural unless the group is explicitly female. This way subconsciously we often assume, for example, doctors to be male. (I am explaining this in an extremely simplified way, I bet there are much better explanations out there. Please check out those if you want to know more!) For a while already there are efforts in consciously including both genders in written and spoken language. First it's a bit strange, but I also find it very inclusive and beautiful, and I am grateful for the many efforts out there, and I try to use this way of communication more consistently myself.

[Ky****]

I did some more research, and I guess I am actually bigender.  I have dysphoria - not about my body being male, but about it being ONLY male.  My spirit or soul or whatever is both, and I want to express that outwardly.  This was confirmed the other day when I was trying on a new woman's shirt over my button-down collared shirt.  I feel silly wearing only women's attire, because it is meant for women's bodies, but what if I wore BOTH?  That would better express my true self anyhow.